
Waterloo.AI Seminars
Waterloo.AI hosts monthly seminar series to foster discussion and collaboration around active topics of AI research at the University of Waterloo. Each seminar includes a talk by a guest speaker audience discussion, and a following reception with light refreshments for further discussion and networking. Please click the topic links for details. Past seminar recordings are available on YouTube.
Upcoming Seminars
Date | Time | Location | Speaker | Topic |
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 | 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT | DC 1304 | Mathias Lecuyer | Adversarial Robustness and Privacy Measurements using Hypothesis-tests |
Monday, May 12, 2025 | 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM EDT | DC 1302 | Thomas Haigh | Where the Database Management System Comes From, and Why it Matters |
Tuesday, May 13, 2025 | 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM EDT | DC 1304 | Thomas Haigh | Artificial Intelligence: The Brand That Wouldn’t Die |
Promote Your AI Seminar with Waterloo.AI
Are you hosting an AI-focused seminar and want to expand its reach?
Submit your event details using this form, and we’ll help promote it through Waterloo.AI’s established channels. Once submitted, our team will review your request and share your event across relevant platforms, including the Waterloo.AI website, newsletter, and social media. Thank you for contributing to the vibrant AI research community at Waterloo!
Past Seminars
Winter 2025
Date | Speaker | Topic | YouTube Recordings |
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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 | Stefanus Jasin | ||
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 | Neel Sundaresan and Michael Kwok | The Postmodern Shift: Generative and Agentic AI in Software Development | |
Thursday, March 6, 2025 | Marc Lanctot | Mastering Board Games by External and Internal Planning with Language Models | |
Thursday, March 6, 2025 | Eva Dyer | Scaling Up Neural Data Pretraining to Uncover Shared Structure in Brain Function | |
Thursday, March 13, 2025 | Jon Stokes | How should we use AI for antibiotic discovery | |
Thursday, April 3, 2025 | V.S. Subrahmanian | Securing the World with AI – Some Adventures |
Fall 2024
Date | Speaker | Topic | YouTube Recordings |
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Monday, December 9, 2024 | Amrit Singh Bedi |
Tuning Free (Inference Time) Alignment of Large Language Models |
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Monday, December 2, 2024 | Siva Reddy | Unlocking Complex Reasoning With Generative Models | |
Thursday, November 28, 2024 | Sophia Yun-Hsuan Lien | Bridging the Reality Gap in Reinforcement Learning: Robust Algorithms and Techniques for Practical Applications |
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Friday, October 18, 2024 | Agustinus Kristiadi | Probabilistic Inference and Decision-Making with Foundation Models for Bayesian Optimization |
Spring 2024
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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Friday, July 19, 2024 | Dr. Arka Roy | Uncertainty Management in Radiotherapy via AI & Optimization | N/A |
Thursday, June 13th, 2024 | Elliot Creager | To Build AI that works for everyone, Adapt Models and Coordinate Data |
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Thursday, May 30th, 2024 | Dr. Amir-Hossien Karimi | Towards Trustworthy Human-Machine Collaboration |
N/A |
Winter 2024
Date | Speaker | Topic |
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February 2, 2024 | Dr. Kevin He | Learning from Viral Content |
February 21, 2024 | Dr. Max Li | Uncertainties in the Airspace |
March 4th, 2024 | Saber Jafarpour | Safety Assurance in Learning-enabled Autonomous Systems |
March 6th, 2024 | Jana Pavlasek | Think Graphical Act Local |
March 7th, 2024 | Jun Gao | Generative AI for 3D Content |
March 11th, 2024 | Dr. Jeremy Wang | Ribbit — Canada's first autonomous airplane and R&D platform |
March 12th, 2024 | Krikamol Muandet | Towards Imprecise Generalisation |
March 20, 2024 | Roya Fallah Firoozi | Safe Robot Autonomy |
March 27th, 2024 | Lunjia Hu | Mathematical Foundations for Trustworthy Machine Learning |
April 1st, 2024 | Sarah Cen | Paths to AI Accountability |
April 3rd, 2024 | Misha Khodak | The Long Tail of AI |
April 12th, 2024 | Adam Dziedzic | Private Prompt Learning for LLM |
April 12th, 2024 | Franziska Boenisch | Individualized Privacy and Memorization in Machine Learning Models |
Fall 2023
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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Dec. 5th, 2023 | Prof. Apurva Narayan | Improving Resilience and Trust in AI Driven Cyber Physical Systems |
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Nov. 24th, 2023 | Prof. Han Zhao | Fair and Optimal Prediction via Post-Processing |
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Nov. 2nd, 2023 | Prof. Lila Kari | Machine Learning for Biodiversity Informatics |
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Sept. 18th, 2023 | Prof. Mo Chen | Interpretable Reinforcement Learning through Control and Human-Robot Interactions |
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Spring 2023
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings | |
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July. 21st, 2023 | Prof. Baoxiang Wang | Information Design in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning |
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July. 7th, 2023 |
Prof. Lili Mou | Modelling Uncertainty in Text Generation | ||
June. 6th, 2023 |
Prof. Gennaro Notomista | Learning to Execute Prioritized Stacks of Robotic Tasks |
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May. 10th, 2023 |
Dr. Prashant Doshi | Fully Decentralized RL in Complex Multi-Agent Settings |
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Fall 2022
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings | |
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Dec.8th, 2022 |
Dr. Ali Ayub | Long-term Real World Autonomy Assistance for Assistive Robots |
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Nov. 10th, 2022 |
Boris Ivanovic Research Scientist in Nvidia's Autonomous Vehicle Research Group | Effectively Integrating Behavior Prediction within the Modern Robotic Autonomy Stack |
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Oct. 13th, 2022 | Prof. Abbas Houssam, Oregon State University | Logic-Based Computational Ethics for Autonomous Agents |
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Sept. 8th, 2022 | Dr. Radoslav Ivanov | Safe autonomy within reach: a verified machine learning and control perspectiv |
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SPRING 2022
WINTER 2022
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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Mar. 17, 2022 | Prof. Dorsa Sadigh | Learning from Non-Traditional Souces of Data |
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Mar. 3, 2022 | Prof. Jackie C. K. Cheung | Keeping Track of Entities Over Time, Minds, and Knowledge Sources |
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Feb. 3, 2022 | Prof. Martha White | Developing Reinforcement Learning Agents that Learn Many Subtasks |
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FALL 2021
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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Nov. 9, 2021 | Prof. Elias Khalil | Deep Reinforcement Learning for Online Combinatorial Optimization: The Case of Bipartite Matching |
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SPRING 2021
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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May 18, 2021 | Prof. Katja Mombaur | Embodied intelligence for human-centred robots - Combining model-based optimization with model-free methods |
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WINTER 2021
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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Apr. 20, 2021 | Animesh Garg | Building blocks of Generalizable Autonomy in Robotics |
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Apr. 6, 2021 | Andreas Loukas | Erdos Goes Neural: an Unsupervised Learning Framework for Combinatorial Optimization on Graphs |
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Mar. 9, 2021 | Dr. Thomas Dietterich | Providing Prospective Guarantees on the Performance of MDP Policies |
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Jan. 12, 2021 | Dr. Mark Riedl | The Quest for Automated Story Generation |
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FALL 2020
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
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Dec. 1, 2020 | Prof. Graham Taylor | Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks: Iterative Generation and Holistic Evaluation |
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Nov. 19, 2020 | Prof. Peter van Beek, Prof. Hamid Tizhoosh, Prof. Kate Larson, Prof. Wayne Chang, Kevin Tuer (Communitech), & Prof. Charles Clarke | AI for Managers and Executives - Webinar Series Pt.3 - Preparing Your Organization to Leverage AI at Scale |
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Nov. 5, 2020 |
Prof. Peter van Beek, Prof. Wayne Chang & Prof. Pascal Poupart Graduate Students: |
AI for Managers and Executives - Webinar Series Pt. 2 - From the Lab to Production |
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Nov. 3, 2020 | Dr. Emtiyaz Khan | Towards Life-Long Deep Learning with Bayes |
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Oct. 29, 2020 | Prof. Vijay Ganesh | Machine Learning and Logic Solvers: The Next Frontier | |
Oct. 22, 2020 | Prof. Fakhri Karray & Prof. Hamid Tizhoosh | AI for Managers and Executives - Webinar Series Pt. 1 - Separating Fact From Fiction |
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Oct. 6, 2020 | Prof. Taylor | Reinforcement learning in the real world - how to "cheat" and still feel good about it |
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Sept. 15, 2020 | Dr. Ashkan Sami | Dependability and Security and How to Improve Both at the Same Time |
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WINTER 2020
Date | Speaker | Topic |
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Jan. 17, 2020 | Ryan Smith | Emotion-cognition Interactions as Deep Active Inference |
Jan. 10, 2020 | Roger Melko | Designing a quantum computer with generative models |
FALL 2019
Date | Speaker | Topic | Youtube Recordings |
---|---|---|---|
Dec. 6, 2019 | Qiang Liu | Recent Applications of Stein's Method in Machine Learning | |
Dec. 5, 2019 | Kristian Kersting | Deep Machines That Know When They Do not Know | |
Nov. 22, 2019 |
Paul Hebert |
Progress Towards Planetary Biosurveillance | |
Nov. 8, 2019 | Chris Eliasmith | Spiking Neural Networks for More Efficient AI Algorithms |
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Oct. 4, 2019 | Pascal Poupart | Unsupervised Video Object Segmentation for Deep Reinforcement Learning |
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Sept. 12, 2019 | Mark Crowley | Artificial Intelligence on Fire! |
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SPRING 2019
Date | Speaker | Topic |
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Jul. 30, 2019 | Kimon Fountoulakis | Local Graph Clustering |
May 28, 2019 | Shai Ben-David | Unsupervised learning; what can, what can't and what should not be done |
WINTER 2019
Date | Speaker | Topic |
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Apr. 29, 2019 | Kerstin Dautenhahn | Human-robot interaction: Challenges and Opportunities |
Mar. 25, 2019 | Seyed Majid Zahedi | Game-Theoretic Approach to Resource Management in Computer Systems |
Mar. 1, 2019 |
Amir Shabani |
Human-centered Intelligent Systems |
Feb. 25, 2019 | Khalid Al-Kofahi | AI and ML at Thomson Reuters |
Jan. 28, 2019 | Yuri Boykov | Reconstructing Whole Vessel-tree: Challenges, Geometric Priors, and Optimization |
Jan. 25, 2019 | Xiao-Ping Zhang | Multimedia Machine Learning/AI for Multimedia Content Analysis |
FALL 2018
Date | Speaker | Topic |
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Nov. 26, 2018 | Robin Cohen | Trust modelling in multiagent systems: a look back and a look ahead |
Oct. 29, 2018 | Vijay Ganesh | Machine Learning for SAT Solvers |
Sept. 24, 2018 |
Hamid Tizhoosh |
Artificial Intelligence - History, Opportunities and Challenges |
Organizing committee

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.